Sunday, January 10, 2010

The attacks, unlike anything Malaysia has seen before, have shaken a country where many Muslims are angry over a Dec. 31 court ruling that overturned a government ban on the use of the word Allah to denote the Christian God.

Though that usage is common in many countries, where Arabic- and Malay-language Bibles describe Jesus as the “son of Allah,” many Muslims here insist that the word belongs exclusively to them and say that its use by other faiths could confuse Muslim worshipers.

Lord Rama, Chief of the house of Raghu,
Uplifters of those who have fallen, (O divine couple) Sita and Rama,
Beloved, praise Sita and Rama,
God or Allah is your name, (meaning that the supreme can be called by many names)
Lord, bless everyone with this wisdom.

Does [the Muslim's God] Khuda, live only in the mosque?
Is [the Hindu's God] Ram, only in idols and holy grounds?
Have you searched and found Him there?
You imagine that Hari [Vishnu] is in the East, and Allah is in the West;
But search for Him only in the heart-that is where Ram and Karim both live.
Which, then, is false, the Quran or the Vedas?
False is the man who does not see the Truth.
It is One;
It is the same One in all.
How can you imagine that It is two?
Says Kabir: 0 Lord, every man and every woman are Your own forms;
I am the simple child of Allah-Ram;
He is my Guru, my Pir
Brother, where did your two gods come from?
Ram, Allah; Keshav, Karim; Hari, Hazrat-so many names!
There may be many golden ornaments, but there is one gold;
it has no two-ness in it.
Merely for the sake of exposition, we make of the One, two.